Pilot identified, cause sought in deadly Alameda County crash

The Alameda County coroner’s bureau has released the name of the pilot who was found dead in a plane crash Thursday morning in Alameda County, an official with the coroner’s bureau said.

Andrew Morse, a 66-year-old Lafayette man, was on his way to Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose from Concord in a single-engine Cessna 210 when the plane went down in a rural area of Alameda County, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, coroner’s bureau and sheriff’s office.

The plane was overdue in San Jose Thursday and the FAA initiated a search that led the Civil Air Patrol to the crash site Friday morning, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor and Eric Peterson, acting director of the Santa Clara County Airports, said.

Gregor said according to authorities Morse was the only person on board the plane when it crashed. Alameda County Sheriff’s Sgt. J.D. Nelson confirmed Gregor’s statement.

The coroner is still determining whether Morse died in the crash or whether something else killed him and the plane crashed, an official with the coroner’s bureau said.